One of the horror genre's "most widely read critics" (Rue Morgue # 68), "an accomplished film journalist" (Comic Buyer's Guide #1535), and the award-winning author of Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), John Kenneth Muir, presents his blog on film, television and nostalgia, named one of the Top 100 Film Studies Blog on the Net.

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Tarzan Week: Tarzan and His Mate (1934)

Tarzan
and His Mate
(1934) is the finest of the Johnny Weismuller/Maureen O’Sullivan MGM Tarzan
movies. It is (shockingly…)
frank in its sense of eroticism, and -- for the first time -- brings into sharp focus
the franchise’s ongoing central debate or argument about the real nature of white “civilization.”

In
this film -- as in all succeeding MGM Tarzan movies -- white hunters enter the
jungle and bring corruption, avarice and violence with them. They steal, they
lie, and they kill. And so, finally, audiences come to agree with Tarzan’s
assessment: they can’t be considered truly civilized. They don’t live in harmony
with nature, and they seek to plunder it for some non-existent thing called “wealth.”

For
Tarzan, by contrast, “wealth” is his companionship with Jane, the river from which
they get their abundant water, and the sun that warms their skin. He can’t understand civilization’s focus on
material things, like the ivory of the elephants at the sacred graveyard.

It’s
strange how the film’s two ideas work hand-in-hand so well.

Jane
and Tarzan share a very erotic, natural, innocent (but clearly sexual…)
relationship, and the film depicts them in bed together, actually, at one
point. That sense of innocent joy in one
another is contrasted with the white interloper’s sense of greedy avarice.

That
interloper kisses Jane against her will at one point, and ogles her, by light
of lantern, when she strips down in a jungle tent.

Where Tarzan sees Jane as
someone he truly loves, Martin Arlington (Paul Cavanaugh), the aforementioned
interloper, sees her as another resource of the jungle to use and “own.”

Tarzan
and His Mate
also features an amazing -- even by today’s standards -- siege-style
conclusion. Martin’s safari, with Jane in tow, comes under attack by a tribe of
lion men who send man-eaters to kill them.
The lions charge and leap, most convincingly, as the white hunters
(including Holt and Jane) take refuge on a rock formation. That formation is soon breached, and the
scenes of lions battling men (and one woman) look remarkably convincing.

Action-packed, legitimately erotic (but not cheaply so, like the Bo Derek Tarzan [1981]), and featuring a social commentary that questions what the word “civilization”
really means, Tarzan and His Mate is the greatest of all Tarzan adventures, and a film
that has lost surprisingly little currency in the eighty-some years since it
premiered.

“These
are animals. They are not human. It’s different.”

A
failed businessman, Martin Arlington (Cavanaugh) joins with hunter Harry Holt (Neil Hamilton) to go beyond the Great Escarpment in search of the legendary
elephant graveyard, where he can gain riches by taking the ivory found
there. When, another expedition, belonging
to a hunter named Van Ness, gets a head-start, Holt and the bankrupt Arlington realize that they need the help of Tarzan (Johnny Weismuller). They seek out Jane’s (Maureen O’Sullivan)
help, hoping she can convince the lord of the jungle to lead them to the
graveyard. To convince her to do so,
they have brought with them perfume, lipstick, and apparel from England.

Tarzan
is not happy with the idea of men robbing the elephant graves, and he and
Arlington clash almost immediately. Arlington attempts to kill Tarzan, and
believes he has succeeded. While Cheetah and other chimps nurse him back to
health, Harry and Martin convince Jane to return to England with them.

After
looting the elephant graveyard, however, Martin’s safari is confronted by a
hostile tribe, and an attack by man-eating lions. An injured Tarzan rouses himself for battle, even as
Jane, Martin and Holt struggle to fend off the attacking beasts.

In
Tarzan
the Ape Man, James Parker (Jane’s father) and Holt (Hamilton) were seen
as good men who were, essentially, out of their element in wild Africa. They
ultimately forged a peace with Tarzan.Tarzan and His Mate takes a hard turn away from that paradigm
and gives the franchise its first fully-formed white villain: Martin Arlington. He won't be the last character of this type in the series, either.

The
film was released in 1934, when America was still recovering from the stock
market crash of 1929, and in the throes of the Great Depression. Accordingly, Tarzan and his Mate opens
with Arlington explaining his financial woes to Holt, and his last chance to be
rich. His “shot” involves the theft of the ivory in the elephant
graveyard. So though he has lost his
fortune, Martin has learned nothing. His
agenda is to climb back to the top of the pack, as soon as possible; at least
from an economics standpoint.

Arlington
is defined, in Tarzan and His Mate by his repetition of extreme violence to achieve
his ends. First, he shoots dead an African worker who refuses an order, making
an example of him to others. Then, he
shoots an elephant in the foot, so that it will instinctively lead him to the
graveyard. And finally, he shoots Tarzan
so that the jungle man will not stand in his way collecting the ivory. Arlington believes, then, that this
technology gives him the means to control others, and that his designation as “civilized”
gives him the right to command and manipulate others.

Martin
also attempts to steal Jane from both Tarzan and Harry, proving that he boasts
no moral code at all. He also leers over
Jane, when seeing her disrobe in a tent.
He is a man of endless appetites who believes that his privileged
upbringing gives him the right to lie, cheat and steal if it keeps him in
power.

Tarzan
does not think so obsessively about himself. He thinks, instead, of the elephants,
who have the right, he believes, not to have their graveyards desecrated. He
also is tender and sweet with Jane upon visiting her father’s grave. Although he is powerful and strong, he is
also gentle and caring for others in a way that the so-called “civilized”
Martin is not.

Tarzan
and His Mate is a great adventure, but it is more than a kid’s matinee movie,
for certain. Early in the film, the
adult Cheetah dies to save Jane from a rhino attack. The ape’s child, young
Cheetah, mourns her death, and the film doesn’t whitewash this stark moment. Death is part of life in the jungle. Wickedly, the movie also builds suspense by
having the young Cheetah encounter a rhino later. Because of the earlier,
emotional encounter, this moment gets viewers to the edge of their seats.

And,
of course, though Tarzan and Jane are true of heart, their interest in each
other is also, well, adult. Throughout
the film, Jane wears an outfit that leaves her nude from midriff to toes, at least from
certain angles.

And there is a delightful and revealing swimming scene here in which Jane swims completely in the nude. This is most
unexpected, but the moment reminds one of Adam and Eve in the Garden. In any such comparison, Martin would be the snake,
bringing lies and deceit to the couple’s world.

As
I’ve noted, the eroticism is both surprising and, intriguingly, related to the
film’s overall viewpoint about civilization. It is natural for Jane and Tarzan to be in love, and to express romantic
(sexual) love. Arlington’s ardent desire
for Jane looks perverse in comparison. The
equation in these films is that Tarzan and the jungle represent a kind of
innocence and moral code, and that white civilization interferes with that
innocence and moral code.

The
great thing, of course, is that while these deeper ideas are apparent to adults (and film critics too), the kids in the audience can focus on the thrills provided by
rhino stampedes, crocodile attacks and the aforementioned -- and amazingly
choreographed -- siege by lions. Tarzan
and His Mate
is my favorite -- and perhaps the best made -- Tarzan movie in cinema
history.

1 comment:

I agree. This is the best of the classic series. What surprised me was the insanity of the action and stunt work in this finale. They throw everything into it and man is it amazing to watch. I don't think any other Tarzan movie has ever had this much animal action in it and done it such skill. The movie also moves at a pretty good pace, balancing all the character moments with solid action and adventure.

The chemistry between Tarzan and Jane in these movies is what helps make them so watchable. But this is really the pinnacle of that chemistry. The screen just steams up when these two are on it. Great review of a great movie. One of the best adventure movies of the era and maybe one of the best of all time.

About John

award-winning author of 27 books including Horror Films FAQ (2013), Horror Films of the 1990s (2011), Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), TV Year (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007), Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair (2006),, Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest and Company (2004), The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi (2004), An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith (2002), The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film & Television (2004), Exploring Space:1999 (1997), An Analytical Guide to TV's Battlestar Galactica (1998), Terror Television (2001), Space:1999 - The Forsaken (2003) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002).

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